Replacement: None. We are no longer carrying the Sphero in our catalog. This page is for reference only.

Sphero is our favorite robotic ball gaming system! It’s also the first ever robotic ball gaming system! This is one seriously cool robotic toy. Simply pair it with your Bluetooth-enabled smartphone and you’ll be driving this little illuminated sphere all over your home, office, busy street… okay maybe not a busy street.

Not only is the Sphero an awesome remote-control robot, it’s also a controller. By picking up the Sphero and tilting, turning and pointing it, you can control on-screen gameplay! Besides its obvious spherical awesomeness, the real magic behind Sphero is the ever growing library of Apps that let you do everything from just driving the ball around (plenty of fun) to multiplayer games, mixed-reality games, and on-screen gaming using the sphero as a controller.

But the Sphero isn’t limited by its current collection of Apps, if you’re tech-savvy then why not download the Sphero SDK and create your own Sphero Apps? Even if you’re not a master programmer, apps like MacroLab make programming the Sphero fun and simple. If you’re more of a hands-on hacker, why not make some sweet Sphero accessories: ramps, obstacle courses, Sphero-based vehicles, there are a ton of possibilities.

So it looks like only the iOS and Android API’s are documented and supported? Is it possible to talk to it directly over Bluetooth? It would be interesting to try building a ROS driver for this, but having to go through an Android intermediary would be a giant pain.

Yeah, unfortunately it’s really more of a software development platform than a hardware development platform. Getting it apart is a challenge and getting it back together is… well, it won’t go back together.

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